Wednesday, February 17, 2010

My most heartfelt and lugubrious apologies to both of my faithful blog readers for not posting more often of late. I intend to post six days a week but have been up to my eyeballs in extra work lately.

Here is an offering which I enjoy. I've always liked goatees, even as a kid, which is LONG before they were the ubiquitous mouth frame they are today. I wore one in the early nineties, even though my (first) wife hated it and a friend of mine used to introduce me as "my friend, Satan." In contemporary art, the Devil frequently has a goatee but I have no idea why that started or how far back that goes. I've read that his arrow-tipped tail is actually a watered-down version of an erect penis, which in very early Christendom was the way he was routinely portrayed. Like much about Christian mythology, I'm guessing this image is a throwback to the satyr of Greek mythology. This is mostly conjecture on my part, so don't go use this info on Jeopardy! and blame me if you lose.

A lot of totally bald guys wear goatees, presumably because they want to have some form of hair decoration on their head and lone mustaches have come to be seen as "gay". A full beard on a bald guy is fine, but I'm not sure of the best way to handle the end of the beard, where it meets the bald head above the ears. A sharply trimmed end seems too abrupt and can make the beard look pasted on. A fade-out from beard to bald seems best, but that's got to be very difficult to achieve and maintain.

The musician, Moby, has a head undecorated by hair (except for eyebrows) and not only likes it that way but is a little militant about it. He once criticized bald guys with goatees in a conversation with me, which struck me as odd since I was wearing something similar – my current mustache and "soul patch". I'm not completely bald, so maybe that made him feel it was appropriate. Regardless, that experience was in the back of my mind when I wrote this cartoon.

While I like goatees, I know there are those who don't and will likely get a laugh from this cartoon. Or email it to their friends with goatees, in an effort to get their goat.

Language develops as it is used, so "goatee" has come to describe what is actually the "van dyke". A goatee is what Col. Sanders and Maynard G. Crebs sport in the photo referenced. So I won't say you're mistaken, as everyone knows what you're talking about, still: all your lesbian references did underscore the perhaps unconscious awareness on your part that the style choice truly is a Van Dyke.

Just stumbled in here by way of clicking on a link at TTF. I now keep wasting the time I reserved for work-related pursuits going through the posts, pausing for intense bouts of laughter more often than not. So, thanks for that! Scrolling through original ideas wrapped in great art is my preferred method of procrastination.

Don "Scrolling through original ideas wrapped in great art is my preferred method of procrastination."

I couldn't agree more! I just stumbled in here myself. I'm a student in Wisconsin and our CAs put "Toilet Tribune" inside of our stalls sometimes. Better than pages ripped out of Cosmo, but still incredibly stupid and typo-ridden. But they put a Bizarro comic in it, which I've loved since the fourth grade, and I finally went to the site...and it's awesome!